This is a first poetry collection by Native-American poet M.L. Smoker. ‘Hanging Loose,” the long-time publisher of the acclaimed Native-American writer Sherman Alexie, has a reputation of publishing an eclectic group of up and coming poets. In “Another Attempt At Rescue,” Smoker deals with one of the great themes of American literature. The assimilation into the mainstram society, and the pulls of the Old World. In this case M.L. Smoker feels the constant pull of the tribe,, the reservation; even when she is far from home. This is a struggle many an immigrant had to face. The same is true of native-Americans, whose land was taken for the price of cheap costume jewelry, or a treaty written in very small print. They found themselves foreigners in their own land. In her poem “Letter to Richard Hugo,” Smoker addresses the late poet with a love letter to her native land after a foray in the larger world: “ Dick: The resevoir on my end of the state is great for fishing. Some of the banks are tall and jagged, others are more patient,/ taking their time as they slope into rocky beaches/… I almost/ thought of not returning to finish the writing program/ you began with your own severe desire for language, But I/ did. And know I am at the end. Already though, I’ll admit/ to you, I’m thinking of home. I have been this whole/time.” (13).

In “Untitled,” I am reminded of Henry Roth’s character in “call It Sleep,” a small Jewish boy, and son of immigrants, who traverses the world of lyrical Yiddish to guttural English. Here Smoker seeks to reconcile her conflicted tongues to no avail: “ I witnessed a Grizzly bear tear into a fallen tree trunk/ with muscle, claw and all the force/ of her own body… I find that certain words arrive first:/ in the woods heavy with near darkness/ she could only be known by one name– wakan sija/ as in instinct: “the bad holy thing.”/ In this pasage that exists between word / and thought/ I have been forced/ to learn a great deal of the collapse/ of one language upon another./ I offer up many explanations for this/ too-often conflicted tongue, never/arriving at any shape of reconciliation.” (36).

What I like most about this collection is that Smoker makes the reader understand what she misses with vivid images, rich language, and real longing.

Book Review:

Breakfast at Kilumney by Maureen Weldon.

Poetry Monthly Press, 39 Cavendish Road, Long Eaton, Nottingham, NG10 4HY, England (poetrymonthly@btinternet.com) ISBN 978-1-906357-31-3, Paperback, 47pp., 5 pounds.

Just occasionally, the Small Press turns up a gem, a gift to us all. Martin Holroyd’s Poetry Monthly Press has now done that.

“Because Time is Such a Short Wink”, the last piece in Maureen Weldon’s new collection, is about as close to perfection as an early version of a poem is likely to get. This is no exaggeration.

Every image in the poem is original and powerful. Every word sits where it must, as though it had been invented to grace this very poem.

I have watched Weldon’s progression from an exuberant, gifted novice to a disciplined writer at times quite ruthless in trimming lines down to the essential. But she is still, although very rarely, tripped up by the odd cliché, like “she is a delight”. But even then she closes the weakened poem with “to pass the day into stars”, that soars.

(A cliché is an attractive expression so worn by over-use that it loses its meaning. It is useful because it identifies hidden meaning lurking beyond the words, waiting to be expressed in a new way. When I spot a cliché in my own copy — we all do — I ask myself to say the same in different words. This can be difficult. In my experience, it is always rewarding.)

Weldon — child Maureen, life-loving Maureen, powerful Maureen — shines through the text: “To be alive is sufficient”, “I want to juggle the stars”, “The root is very strong” and “Hope:/like a new moon, or a new lover’s kiss”.

Over the years, Weldon has been introducing something new to European literature: publicly expressed approval of the joyful freedom of old women and old people to seek fulfilment within themselves and each other.

“Stars are the footlights”, observes a retired ballerina in the new collection as she sits in shawls and buttoned-up boots, and “sun floods my stage”.

And, in a poem about the always untimely decay of human beauty — hers, yours and mine — she resolves to light romantic candles, “One for him, one for me” and with “breasts high as Olympian peaks” and “Lips cunning like Aphrodite” to celebrate life until dawn.

May these lines take root in the culture.

Thomas Land

IBSN: 978-4303-1034-1

Review By: Charles P. Ries
Word Count: 270

In her third book of poetry, “Blood Soaked Dresses” Gloria Mindock raises horror to transcendent allegory. With language that has a lyrical soft quality to it, her new book of poetry becomes the perfect vehicle to express moments (sad, horrific, and glorious) that are set in El Salvador during its civil war from 1980 to 1992. When we see the massacre of innocents continuing in Kenya, Somalia, Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan – the list becomes painfully endless. Her book becomes a timeless poetic prayer for peace.

Her book of poetry is about the most painful of subjects. Through Mindock’s love of this culture, its people, words, and many flavors, she creates transcendent metaphor after transcendent metaphor. Here are a few cherry-picked from her poem, “Seeing Is Only a Flawed Secret”: “A long shadow filling my body”, “I have conversation with the abyss”; "My weary mind is just a symbol.” “The sky is gray today. / healing itself back to blue.” Jesus, rearrange your schedule. / Go, show me your lips. Make your kiss / a compass so I know where to go.” “I look out the window and feel / like a fool. / Everyone carries on with no ears. / Such motionless supervision – a crime!” Amazing – and these lines and phrases are taken from just one of her 45 poems.

Mindock’s success with “Blood Soaked Dresses” is all the more remarkable given how very hard it is to write about horror. If a poet can enter into this world, speak to this blackness and create a wisp of hope, then the poet is by demonstration a great writer indeed.

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typewriter art
By: Mark Sonnenfeld
Marymark Press
45-08 Old Millstone Drive
East Windsor, NJ 08520
Price: $4 / 16 Pages

ISBN: 978-0-9798819-9-2

Review By: Charles P. Ries
Word Count: 308

Mark Sonnenfeld is a unique creature in the small press. His world is one that lives at the intersection of poetry, word, and visual art. Many times his use of language has nothing to do with complete thought or meaning, but rather the splattering of words in a random cascade. We might call his work “experimental”, but for the fact that poetry, as one of writings shortest forms, lends itself to constant variation and experimentation. His new book, “typewriter art” is no different. Dedicated to small press pioneer and all around good-guy Joseph Verrilli, he takes words, or rather the ink-on-paper-image of words, and collides them with a phrase. On page 8 we find word the word “Mark” in 68 point type face and below it the phrase, “Magazines from the stack”. On page 5 we find the phrase “I woke to head pressure” in 14 point type laid onto a page that has a series of letters extracted from words in 68 point bold black type face. His work is so conceptual that it is even hard to clearly describe – it must be both seen and read.

So what is one to make of this? Is it poetry or is it visual art? Certainly it is experimental, and in each art form there is a mad scientist who will push the medium’s relevance toward the absurd, toward meaninglessness, through the trap door of context, and perhaps, toward yet new meanings. Will this become the rage? Will thousands of writers try to do what Sonnenfeld has done? I doubt it, but the highest form of flattery isn’t always imitation, sometimes it is our acknowledgement to artists like Sonnenfield that we have experienced their creation and encourage their continued exploration. The great literary unknown will be a richer friendlier planet because we have pioneers like Sonnenfeld orbiting the “word”.

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THE WIND TWIRLS EVERYTHING
By: Francine Witte
Muscle Head Press Chapbooks
Boneworld Publishing
3700 County Road 24
Russell, New York 13684
Price: $5 / 40 Pages / 25 Stories

Review By: Charles P. Ries
Word Count: 366

Francine Witte’s book of flash fiction/prose poems gives us two wonderful things. The first is her nimble and effortless use of story, form, and technique. This collection of 25 short form vignettes shows us how quickly a skilled writer can create place, character, conflict, and move a story to a stratifying conclusion. Witte who is also a poet and a playwright applies these two forms into interesting, fast moving short stories. Her technique is effortless and invisible, but central to making these stories move forward.

The second gift of “The Wind Twirls Everything” is her reflection on love, clueless good hearted men, place, and family. The men who populate her stories “try” to do the right thing, they are not without heart and soul, but still they do manage to stumble. Into this mix are the women who love, long for, or try to stay away from them. This collision of interests and abilities gives the stories in this collection their strong core. She is quick and nimble as she riffs around a variety of topics: a chair, a love, a city, a time, a man, a woman.

There are many great stories in this collection: Jake Is A Forgotten Place, Someone Keeps Calling, My Husband’s Mistress, Joe and Sue Get In The Car, to name a few. The open paragraph of her story, “The Romance Of Sadness” gives us a taste of how well and how quickly Witte invites us into her world, “One day, she fell in love with the sadness. Unlike the man who had given it to her, the sadness would stay with her long into the night and never leave. If the sadness did leave, there would more sadness. And that was good.” And again her opening paragraph of “Someone Keeps Calling”: “A faraway voice. Like a voice underwater. He says hello. Nothing more. He hangs up. Calls back. His breath is angry, inviting, sexual. He’s distant, but intimate. Saying nothing. Saying everything.”

What a treat to see Witte bob and weave structure, pacing, and story with such alacrity. How wonderful to read stories that run no more than 350 words in length contain so much heart, humor, yearning and meaning.

________________________________________________________

Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over two hundred print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a novel based on memory and five books of poetry — the most recent entitled, The Last Time which was released by The Moon Press & Publishing. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot (www.wordriot.org). He is on the board of the Woodland Pattern Bookstore (www.woodlandpattern.org) and a member of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. But most of all he is a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes (http://www.visitsheboygan.com/dairyland/). You may find additional samples of his work by going to: http://www.literati.net/Ries/

A few months ago I asked Chris Harter, Editor/Publisher of Bathtub Gin who were some the pioneers in the independent small press movement. He said without a doubt one of them had to be the late d.a. levy of Cleveland, Ohio – this was the first time I had ever heard of d.a. levy.

Levy was 26 years old when he shot himself. Well regarded small press editor, Len Fulton says that the mimeo graph revolution “is almost overwhelming in its reach and passion for its subject. It is sobering to think that one young person could accomplish so much in so short a time, while confronting torment from within – and genuine torments from without.” While I enjoyed reading levy’s poetry and seeing his visual art, what I found most compelling were the numerous interviews with him from this time period. They reminded me how ground breaking the free speech movement of the 1960’s was, and what a wonderful, diverse and passionate group of poets were at the forefront of this effort.

In Karl Young’s essay on levy he says, “levy invented more literary forms then any other young poet working in the U.S. in the 1960’s.” Levy who only graduated from high school devoured books and build an international network of writing friends. He was consumed by language and words. When he was arrested on obscenity charges in 1967 Allen Ginsberg and the infamous Fugs (Ed Sanders rock group) came to Cleveland for benefit concert. He never left Cleveland or, rather never gave up on Cleveland. As Ed Sanders says, “Cleveland was levy’s decision. I think it was an act of Cleveland patriotism. ….he wasn’t going to let anyone drive him out.”

Contributors to this book include: Ed Sanders, T.L. Kryss, Karl Young, Allen Frost, Larry Smith, Russell Salamon, John Jacob, Doug Manson, and Michael Basinski. The book includes a 2006 DVD of Kon Petrochuk’s film documentary titled, if i scratch, if i write. It also includes a chronology of his life and work, biographical essays, photographs, interviews, profiles, statements, letters, art work, collage, poems, critical appreciations of his writing and art, “Cleveland Prints” in full color. This is as comprehensive and riveting a book about an artist, passion, and persecution as I have ever read. It’s all meat, no bullshit. I found it confounding and amazing that such a young, untrained writer could grow himself in to such a remarkable talent in so short a time.

I asked Larry Smith of Bottom Dog Press why he published this book and he told me, “I know that I and Ingrid Swanberg, as co-editors, have long had a sympathy for the outrider or outsider artist and writers. My books on rebel-poet Kenneth Patchen and later Lawrence Ferlinghetti were my launching place into the world of publishing on alternative writing. Ingrid’s big dissertation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison links levy with world writers of vision and rebellion. We both carried a deep appreciation for d.a.levy as a person of small means who created a great deal of good through his devotion and hard work. That he was persecuted by the forces that be (were and are) in Cleveland is clearly documented in our book. But we wanted to go beyond making levy a martyr hero, and show the range of his vision and the achievement of his work. He is acclaimed internationally today as a visual artist, concrete poet, and main force of the 1960’s underground movement. To bring it home, his poems about his native place and times are just remarkable works deserving of our deepest attention because the repressive forces he confronted are still with us. Long live levy.”

The conclusion of Ed Sanders interview is beautiful tribute to this young genius, “On November 24, 1968, he shot himself in the forehead with his childhood .22 rifle sitting lotus. And once again pled nolo contendere. It’s always difficult to make sense of a poet’s brief florescence, Hart Crane…d.a. levy…the chaff of genius, blown up above harsh Cleveland. It may take centuries to sort him out. It often does with poets. The issues of economic justice and personal freedom which wore out the good bard levy have not yet been addressed in America. And we need a way that a shyer and yes even more timorous genius can flourish their proper span. And Darryl Allen Levy live not his span, but his poems….”The Bells of the Cherokee Ponies,” “Kibbutz in the Sky,” North American Book of the Dead, Cleveland undercovers, and a big series of concrete books that find their measure. [Raises fist in solidarity] Shine on, oh d.a. levy, rinsed in the American dream…”

If you love the independent small press, poetry, and the freedom of expression we all hold so dear, you must read this book.

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Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over one hundred and seventy print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a novel based on memory and five books of poetry — the most recent entitled, The Last Time which was released by The Moon Press in Tucson, Arizona. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot (www.wordriot.org), Pass Port Journal (www.passportjournal.org) and ESC! (www.escmagazine.com). He is on the board of the Woodland Pattern Bookstore (www.woodlandpattern.org). He is a member of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission and a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes. You may find additional samples of his work by going to: http://www.literati.net/Ries/

http://www.centennialpress.com/

Review By: Charles P. Ries

I had finished my reading at Milwaukee’s venerated Woodland Pattern Book Center’s Poetry Marathon, when a twenty-something guy carrying a camcorder and tape deck says to me, “I’d love to use some of your stuff in my Anthills. How about it?” That was my first meeting with small press publisher, Charles Nevsimal. He started fast, and he hasn’t slowed down.

Centennial Press’s inaugural issue of Anthills came out in 2000. Anthills 2 soon followed, and by the time Issues 3 & 4 came along, the zine had already featured an impressive roster of small press heavy weights and new voices including: Antler, Matt Cook, A.D. Winans, Susan Firer, Gunther C. Fogle, William Taylor Jr., John Sweet, justin.barrett, Nathan Graziano, Karl Koweski, Glen W. Cooper, Lynne Savitt, Todd Moore, Bradley Mason Hamlin, Lyn Lifshin, Alex Carlson, and John Tuschen (plus a host of others). Deborah Bingen joined the team in 2002 as artist and designer (and later went on to marry the Editor). Her contribution was immediate with the release of two successive chapbooks: The System by A.D. Winans, and Exclamation Points: Ad Infinitum! by Antler, both praised for their content as well as design. Centennial Press filled the time between chapbooks with a string of broadsides for poets Gunther C. Fogle and Jeff Poniewaz. Most recently, Centennial Press has released chapbooks for B.J. Best (a pocket-sized book called Crap) and Alex Carlson (Whispering Winds: the Record Player Reads.) Both have sold extremely well.

Q: Chuck, Tell me how you ended up a small press publisher? When did you start?

A: I went to a small Lutheran University school here in southeastern Wisconsin. Early Freshman year, my Intro to Writing professor, Jean Timpel invited me to a Tuesday night writer’s group meeting on campus. It wasn’t long before I volunteered to spearhead the design and publication of the school’s modest literary journal, which, prior to my involvement, was nothing more than 8-1/2” by 11” sheets of white typing paper bound by a shoddy plastic spiral coil. I saw the potential for something far greater than what was being realized, and saw to it that the journal evolved into something more deserving. The first thing I did was trimmed the size down to that of an actual book. By the time my Junior year rolled around, I was one of two people selecting content for publication, something I did in addition to the proofing, editing, designing, and printing of the book.

I was lucky to have been there (Concordia) at the same time as several other talented writers. Together, we formed The Foundry, a semi-elitist-but-altogether-inspiring campus writer’s group. Even in the early days with The Foundry, I always pictured myself putting something similar together once I graduated. Something I controlled completely. So after the shock of being a college graduate wore off, I sat down with my buddy, Josh Peterson, and together we gave birth to Centennial Press (named after the bar we frequented in our undergrad years). Anthills became the name of our publication. The ball was rolling. But soon, Josh moved away and I was left with sole patronage of Centennial Press. I’d already gathered poems from friends and ex-Foundry members, but I wanted Anthills to be more than just a bunch of material from people I knew well. Then, lightning struck. I “discovered” the poetry of A.D. Winans. I was surfing the Internet and reading everything of his I could find. So I sent him an e-mail requesting poetry for publication and he responded in kind the very next day with three poems that completely blew my mind.

With restored verve, I sought out Milwaukee poet, Antler. The people at Woodland Pattern bookstore were kind enough to pass a letter on to him. About a week after I dropped off the letter, he called me on the telephone to tell me how excited he was that a new poetry zine was being birthed in Milwaukee. He also told me to watch my P.O. box for a submission. Wouldn’t you know it; the man sent me 15 poems not one week later. In addition to that, he urged his friend, Jeff Poniewaz, to submit, which he also did. And the rest, as they say, is history …

Q: Why do you do it?

A: I publish because it is my way of putting something beautiful into the world … something worthwhile. It’s a labor of love in many ways, I suppose. I hardly make a dime off anything I publish – hell, most times I end up well in the red. But there’s something about giving people a book or a sheet of paper with words on it knowing it might in one way or another lend to the shaping of their world. Publishing these books is to me every bit as fulfilling as writing a good poem. You’re seeing your vision through to the end. And you walk into a bookstore and the book you made, you created, you birthed into the world is resting on the shelves among all the giants … Neruda, Cummings, Whitman, Bukowski … that gives me chills every time. But that’s just my self-centric reason for doing this. I do it also, of course, because I believe strongly in the poetry I put out there. I do it because I want to give these poems a home. The home I give them is Anthills.

Q: Are you more of a publisher, or more of a writer?

A: I would say there’s a stronger urge in me to sit down at my typewriter and rap out a poem or two … or eight. But I’m delighted as hell I don’t have to choose either/or in real life, because my desire to put out Anthills – or a chapbook or broadside for that matter – is so strong, there’s not a time, really, I’m not thinking about my next project. And in many ways, I suppose, the two “vocations,” I’ll call them, are not all too dissimilar. As editor/publisher, I’m deeply involved in each project … and by the time the issue (or chap/broadside) is published, it magically contains so much of me, it’s almost as if it came from the same place my poems come from. Not only that, but every poem I publish through Centennial Press is one I wish I’d written. So, even when the writer in me is taking a backseat to the publisher, he’s busily taking notes on how to better himself. Oddly, though, I feel no great need to see my own poems in print. I did at first, because I suppose I needed a validation of some sort. But I haven’t sent anything out for several months. I probably wrote near 400 poems last year alone, and only three to four people have ever seen them.

Q: Your Anthills series is as much graphic art as it is a premier collection of writers and their work – what are you trying to accomplish with Anthills?

A: Thank you so much. I’m very actively and creatively involved in the pieces I publish. There’s much to be said about magazines like Free Verse (which is utterly fabulous, by the way) or Fuck! (which has its own charm) that simply put poetry down on a page and disseminate it. But that’s not for me. I am incessantly seeking a new format or an inventive way of putting poetry into the world because I’m interested in creating “books as art,” items that can be cherished as much for what they are as for what they say. Then there are the poems themselves, and the selection thereof. The way they all fit together in my mind … they tell a story. There is always a reason for the order in which I arrange the poems, even if it’s not at first glance evident to the reader. But to put it simply, Charles, I want to create something people will love and hold on to for a long time to come.

Q: Who designs your books?

A: My wife, Deborah, designs all the books and broadsides for Centennial Press. She’s brilliant, and I’m damn lucky to have her, both as my small press partner and my wife. I love the interest she puts into each piece, reading it before figuring out how to interpret it visually. Sometimes she’ll draw inspiration directly from the poems we’re publishing. Other times, she’ll have a certain vision that she’ll want to carry through independent of the poem or poems. But the work she does always floors me. Without her, there could be no Centennial Press. Period. So yeah, maybe I’m the one everybody knows because I’m the one in contact with the poets we publish, I’m the one being interviewed (the one with the loud mouth). But she’s the reason our books are so wonderful. She’s the wizard behind the curtain.

Q: You seem to have connected with many of the major poets in the small press, how did you manage to do that over such a short period of time?

A: It was rather easy actually. I simply became a fan of their work. Antler, Bill Taylor, A.D. Winans, justin.barrett, Glenn Cooper, Nathan Graziano, the list goes on … even publishers like Brian Morrissey and Bill Roberts. I became a fan of their work and that’s how I approached them as a publisher. What poet isn’t flattered when a publisher seeks him out because he’s just gotta publish one of his poems? Over time, I became quite close to a lot of those guys. I feel bad though because recently, I’ve kind of fallen off the map a little. I got married in 2004, and while it might sound cliché, I’ve sort of been adapting to (and fully embracing) my home life. Time goes by now without my even noticing because I’m doing this or that, and next thing you know, my friend A.D. turns 70 and I didn’t even wish him a happy birthday. I regret that. Also, I’ve taken on another job which has kept me pretty busy … I’m the editor of Milwaukee’s INFO* magazine. If it’s not one thing, it’s always something else.

Q: How does Milwaukee, Wisconsin work as a center for your publishing efforts? Do you ever wish you could be in New York or San Francisco?

A: There’s something romantic about being a publisher of poetry in this blue-collar Midwestern town. I feel at home here. And there’s a strong scene here as well, writers like Antler, Susan Firer, yourself, Catfish McDaris, Matt Cook, (the list goes on and on) – Alex Carlson, B.J. Best (whose book Crap I nominated for the Pushcart Prize), Brandon Lewis – calling Milwaukee their home, it’s a very exciting place to coexist as poet and publisher. I feel it almost an intrinsic duty of mine to put Milwaukee on the map – or at least, help keep it there. That’s why you’ll see many local poets in Anthills mingling with other small press big (and little) fish from across the U.S. and the globe.

Q: You know a ton of writers, now you have to pick your top two living poets and tell me who they are and why they top your list.

A: Only two? Jeeze. I’ll say, without a doubt, three of the best voices in the vast world of small press poetry are William Taylor Jr., justin.barrett, and John Sweet. Their work continually floors me and I will read their words until the day I die. Nathan Graziano is another who’s really come into his own. His book, Honey, I’m Home, is one of the best chapbooks I’ve ever read.

That said, however, my two favorite living poets are potentially the best-known small press poet actively working, and the least known: Antler and Gunther C. Fogle, respectively. Antler is perhaps the most wonderful human being I have ever had the privilege of getting to know. His poetry transcends every notion of beauty … he shows me things, allows me to see the world so clearly in ways I never thought imaginable. He is the closest thing the world has to Walt Whitman and his books should line the walls of your heart. They certainly do mine. I never go anywhere without my copy of his
Selected Poems, and I make a point to read from it aloud whenever my travels take me someplace new. Antler is a blessing and I cherish him the way I cherish his poems.

As for GC Fogle, he’s a different breed entirely. The thing about Fogle’s work is that it always makes me want to write. There’s some sort of kinetic energy existing in his poems that drives me into action. His bravado is uncanny, but that’s something I dig about him. His poems are bigger than he is. They’re beautiful, they’re tragic, they’re hilarious … and most of them exist only in the envelopes he sent me from his flat in Colorado. Original
copies he writes (on a manual typewriter, of course) and sends off to me without editing, without revision, without worrying about making copies first or sending them out to mags for publication. How romantic is that?! There are some truly brilliant poems lying on my desk at home, poems only my eyes have ever seen. But don’t you worry … I’m going to make sure one day the world too has its chance to read the words of Gunther C. Fogle. He’s one of the reasons I’m a publisher.

Q: What projects are you working on?

A: Currently, I’m working on my most ambitious project to date, a book of New & Selected poems by William Taylor Jr. called, Words For Songs Never Written. It’s a project I’ve had on the backburner for a long while now because I’ve always lacked the money needed to do it justice – and this is one of those books that NEEDS to be done right. But I’m happy to report it’s finally in full swing. The poems have been chosen and Deb is working on design ideas as we speak. Bill is one hell of a poet, and this book of his deserves to be on the shelf of every self-respecting admirer of poetry out there. I’m honored to be the one to publish it for him.

I’ve just released a chapbook for the mega-superior cool Milwaukee poet-from-another-century-altogether, Alex Carlson. Al’s book is filled with some of the most life-affecting words you’ll ever read, small press or not. The man’s writing is breathtakingly good. He’s the real deal.

I’m also still piecing together poems for a collection I’ve dubbed Poems As Pickup Lines, which features 10-12 fun, short, “pickup” poems by poets like Bill Taylor and justin.barrett. They’re each printed on small, business card-sized paper, packaged together in a unique way for maximal portability. It’ll be a fun little collection. Then, of course, I’m always working on Anthills, and I’ve got books by John Sweet and Gunther C. Fogle forthcoming as well. One thing’s for sure, I’m always busy … and I’m always broke. But it’s always worth it.

Q: Are you open to submissions? How should writers get their work to you? What are you looking for?

A: I accept submissions for Anthills year-round (I don’t believe in cutoff dates) and they can be sent to me via e-mail or snail mail. But I’m utterly awful at responding … I’m trying to turn over a new leaf (I’ve never liked that cliché). I’m looking for poetry that kicks my ass and makes me cry. Poetry that sets fire to the world. Short, long, free verse, haiku, whatever. My only requisite is that it makes me feel. If it does that, it’ll find its way into print one way or another.

Q: What’s you biggest beef with the small press? And tell the truth …egos, nepotism, small minds, high walls?

A: All of the above. In my opinion, there are too many poets out there looking for favors … “You publish me and I’ll publish you.” Poets are very cheap. They want you to buy their books but won’t shell out $4 for one of yours. In general, they’re too full of themselves. There are too many poets out there emulating Bukowski, as if he was some sort of small press martyr. They want to be Bukowski, they want to write Bukowski, they want to make it big like Bukowski. And they’re too caught up in this bullshit of a
fantasy to realize they’re scamming themselves. If they truly want to be like Bukowski, they should stop trying to be like him and start acting who they really are. I’ve read enough poems about puking, fucking, boozing, gambling, whoring … I’m through with all that. Those poets should take a look at what they’re putting into the world and ask themselves, “Is it really worth it?” You want to know what I love about the small press. That you can have a guy like Nathan Graziano with balls enough to put together a
chapbook of poetry about how much he loves his wife, loves his little girl, questions himself as husband and father, and puts himself on the line like that … for everyone to see. That takes guts. Enough Bukowski already. Give me Nathan Graziano!

Q: What is your favorite small press publication – why?

A: That’s easy: Johnny Brewton’s X-Ray. Johnny Brewton does more with X-Ray than I could ever aspire to do with Centennial Press … though I certainly do aspire to play at his level. He’s one of my strongest inspirations when it comes to conjuring up innovative ways of packaging a poem. His publications are worth every penny you’ll dish out for them (and believe me, you can drop a pretty penny on his publications). But like I said, they’re always worth it. For Johnny, there are no boundaries, and I admire that about him.

A more affordable alternative would be Brian Morrissey’s Poesy and Linda Aschenbrenner’s Free Verse. Both are very fine zines whose editors are honest and have a great taste in poetry. Their format is simple but the work that finds its way into each is incredible. It’s a shame so many publications have come and gone in the short while I’ve been on the scene. It’s nice to know these two have achieved a certain staying power.

Lastly, I cannot allow myself to answer this question without mentioning Bill Roberts’ Bottle of Smoke Press and justin.barrett’s Hemispherical Press. These guys don’t publish zines, but they put out chapbooks and broadsides that are consistently great. They are both at the top of the small press publishing game.

Q: I hear you just got married. Congrats! What’s married life doing to your writing?

A: Thank you. Many months have passed since you first asked this question, Charles, so the “just” is a little misleading. (Another fine example of how I let time slip away from me.) For the near year-and-a-half since we’ve been married, I’d say probably half the poems I write are about my wife, or married life, etc. It’s an endless source of material for me, and the best thing of all is the poetry I write about Deborah always seems
to lead me to a deeper truth about our spectacular relationship I hadn’t previously been aware existed. I don’t know how many people in this world would love reading about my wife, but I sure do love writing about her.

___________________________________________________

Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short
stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over one hundred and
twenty print and electronic publications. He has received three Pushcart
Prize nominations for his writing and most recently read his poetry on
National Public Radio’s Theme and Variations, a program that is broadcast
over seventy NPR affiliates. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a
novel based on memory. Ries is also the author of five books of poetry — the
most recent entitled, The Last Time which was released by The Moon Press in
Tucson, Arizona. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot (www.wordriot.org
<http://www.wordriot.org/> ) and on the board of the Woodland Pattern
Bookstore in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Most recently he has been appointed to
the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. You may find additional samples of
his work by going to: http://www.literarti.net/Ries/

Review By: Charles P. Ries

Word Count: 1, 523 (does not include header and reviewer’s bio)

Let me cut to the chase for all you poetry review skimmers out there. (You know who you are.) Chasing Saturday Night by Michael Kriesel is one of the best books of poetry I have ever read. Go out and buy it right now.

It is great because, like every seminal work of poetry, it is thematically rich, technically strong, readable, surprising, insightful and entertaining. Michael Kriesel drills for meaning in the middle of no-where-Wisconsin and produces a truly remarkable work of art.

I asked Kriesel when he started writing, and how the hell he got so good at just 44 years of age. “I started writing poetry at 16," he said. "It was an outlet for my emotional distress, and I was blessed with not one but two teachers who spent hours every week with me outside of class, critiquing my poems. And there was a small zine that started in my home town in ‘78, at the same time, and the editor & I became good friends. A classic example of when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. The zine was Jump River Review, edited by Mark Bruner.”

I commented about the thematic richness found in Chasing Saturday Night with its subtle and economic use of words. Kriesel said, “Perhaps some of the thematic depth you mention results from the highly charged nature of some of the images used. For the last 7 or 8 years I’ve been studying a number of esoteric systems, part of which has involved working with symbols, archtypes– studying the myths they sprang from, the purpose they serve in our collective unconscious, how we construct our own personal mythologies, creative visualization, striving towards psychological unity & self-balance. Things bleed through. Then you get that economy of words with revision. Tons. Each poem’s at least 5 hours, often up to 20. In 2 or 3 hour work sessions each morning. With much strong coffee, a formica table, a picture window, an easy chair.”

Kriesel writes like the owner of a crystal shop must walk – with gentle, alert attention.

Here is one example of such a poem, “Drinking with Your Ghost After the Funeral”: “Sitting in a pickup in the middle of a field / the engine ticking down to nothing / windows filled with rows / of corn stalking into shadow / I drink until you’re sitting next to me / though we both know / you’re really at the cemetery / what was left of you after the accident concealed / by oak and bronze and varnish and miraculously healed / in everybody’s memory / still the whiskey / lurches back and forth between us in the muddy / light until the bottle’s dry / and dark as that smoked glass / we used to watch eclipses through / though tonight / there’s just a wobbly moon / and a few raccoons / stealing corn like no one’s there.”

His work walks poetry’s razor’s edge again and again, and never falls into maudlin soup on one side or excessive cleverness on the other. He is masterfully aware of the place he is creating. I noted the often fragile, forlorn and wry quality to this collection. How did he acquire this quality? He responded: “Harsh experiences I’ve had: from growing up with an abusive, alcoholic dad; from my decade in the Navy’s paranoid environment, from my own tour of duty as someone who drank too damn much on a regular basis. Plus it’s a common reaction to the way the world often is. Especially in the arts, where intelligent, emotionally hurting people often go to heal themselves.” What is marvelous about poets well-schooled in form and word is their ability to take the personal and turn it into a universal. Kriesel excels at this. His poems are as well calibrated as the best poems I have ever read.

Reading Chasing Saturday Night I could have extracted stanzas that describe place with such economy and beauty, it would have been quite enough for me just to read these stanzas alone. Such as these lines from, “Grampa’s Old Place”: “tar paper shines across the yellow wheat / the basswood siding’s gone // so soft your thumbnail could mark it / but it soaked up paint like sunshine." Or this one from “Communion”: “ It’s cool / the way a basement is in August / dark except for one small window / floating high above us / like in church / the bottom half cut off by grass // the only other light’s a bulb / tiny as a child’s night-light / mounted on a grinding wheel / bolted to a workbench.” Or this from “Saturday Morning”: “while between the fresh air and the sun / part of me starts to doze / my body grows light as sawdust / far away a chainsaw buzzes / like the season’s first mosquito."

I asked Kriesel about place. He said, “A friend recently told me, ‘Everybody lives someplace and the work should show it. Homeless poetry doesn’t interest me.’ I got a good chuckle from that. All poetry is regional poetry, to some degree. Chasing Saturday Night is set in rural Wisconsin, peopled with relatives & farmers. But the poems deal with universal human themes since humans are the same everywhere at their core, despite differences in customs, education. I’ve also been writing minimalist nature poems for several years. Which have a long tradition in the Far East. And in even these, place plays an important role. Seeping through in an image or two. You see, we live in the world, much as some poets would deny this. Genius loci. The spirit of the place we live in fills
us. People in rural environments know this intimately, living it each day. Their urban counterparts exist at a further remove from this. I grew up in rural central Wisconsin. Have always been more sensitive to my natural environment, sometimes preferring trees to people. That’s changing as I grow more social. Also as a teen I loved the long descriptive paragraphs in H.P. Lovecraft’s weird fiction. Setting really sets the mood, personification of an aura or emotion, again that genius loci that that makes puppets of the players sometimes, other times just coloring our souls.”

He does not use punctuation and this only serves to accentuate the clarity of these poems. Nothing weighs them or holds them to the page – not even a comma. When asked about this lack of punctuation, he said, "I started doing this in ‘97 when I started writing short bursts of image-based spiritual poems that were trying to convey the epiphanies, the insights and breakthroughs I was having as a result of meditation & other disciplines. It was hard trying to verbalize these abstractions, ideas of a basically often nonverbal nature; so stripping things down, purifying the language seemed a good idea and did help. Now, later on down the line, it keeps my lines clean, pared. I’m writing longer narrative pieces without punctuation, and to do that you have to write clearly, clean.”

Retrospection collides with place in Chasing Saturday Night. We find a man at middle age looking back. I asked Kriesel about his childhood. “I lived in my head, and still do, pretty much," he said. "I was born in 1961 in Wausau, Wisconsin, a town of 40,000 in the middle of the state’s dairyland. My father worked in pre-fab housing construction, and was a foul-tempered drunk. My mother was (and is) a saint, with a heart as big as a duck. But this was 1961, and women weren’t independent like today. She was stuck at home with no job or driver’s license. I was an only child until I was 10. My brother’s a trucker. I was quiet and orderly. Read lots. Played by myself. I wasn’t happy or unhappy. I didn’t have much for playmates out in the country. But there were a few friends at school. When I discovered comic books at 12 it opened a universe for me. It possessed my imagination. If there’d been comic book teachers in high school instead of English teachers, I’d be drawing & writing Batman today, instead of versifying.”

Sometimes a “reviewer” falls in love. Sometimes he gets off the fence and gets swept away into the poems, suspending disbelief and discovering a few hours later that he’s been Chasing Saturday Night.
_________________________________________

Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over two hundred print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a novel based on memory and five books of poetry — the most recent entitled, The Last Time which was released by The Moon Press & Publishing. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot (www.wordriot.org), Pass Port Journal (www.passportjournal.org) and ESC! (www.escmagazine.com). He is on the board of the Woodland Pattern Bookstore (www.woodlandpattern.org). He is a member of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission and a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes (http://www.visitsheboygan.com/dairyland/). You may find additional samples of his work by going to: http://www.literati.net/Ries/

I have never done a poetry reading in a Laundromat. But after years of corresponding with small press editors, Brian Morrisey of Poesy, Christopher Robin of Zen Baby and poet, Ellaraine Lockie I thought I would give it a try. But it wasn’t as easy as that.

“I know you love your writing basement and all your routines, but there are people out here who want to meet you; you’d be the featured at the Wired Wash Cafe! So what if it’s a Laundromat,” Ellaraine wrote. “Come on man, get your ass out here; we put your name in lights – Christmas lights!” Robin wrote. “We’ll do right by you. We might even get some surfing in. You can stay at my place,” Morrisey told me in another e-mail. The three of them chipped away at all my excuses for not dragging my ass out of my basement in Wisconsin to Santa Cruz, California.

Following a four hour flight delay, getting routed through Salt Lake City, being jammed in the corner seat by a very large man who needed all of his and half of my seat to sit in, and spilling my peach smoothie (with extra soy for protein power) over my shirt, I realized God was testing me. She wanted to make sure I was worthy of being a headliner in a Laundromat. (We Midwestern poets are often afflicted by a false sense of unworthiness). I crawled off my plane at the San Jose Airport; weak, egoless, with a peach smoothie on my shirt. “What am I doing here? What good can any of this accomplish? Why did I leave my basement?” I silently moaned as I walked through the terminal with Lockie looking for something stronger than a smoothie to drink.

The next evening after dinner at the Saturn Café; following a power outage, and a torrential west coast downpour, we walked over to the weekly reading that Morrisey and Robin have turned into one of the premier venues for small press poets on the West Coast. Past featured readers have included: A.D. Winans, Neeli Cherkovsky, Hugh Fox, John Dorsey, S.A. Griffin, Klipschutz, Gerald Nicosia, Joe Pachinko, William Taylor, Jr., Michelle Tea, Raindog, Café Barbarians, Jennifer Blowdryer and Michael Hathaway (who was supposed to show up, but his flight got canceled). More recently Robin started to tape the readings. He sells them as DVD’s, as well as sending copies to “The Poetry Collection” at the University at Buffalo / The State University of New York. There the readings are stored in perpetuity, along with the work of hundreds of other small press poets.

The Wired Wash Café Poetry Reading happens every Friday at 7:00 p.m. Posters are put up around Santa Cruz, Berkley and San Francisco prior to each reading. As promised, my name was indeed in a funky lighted sign that was hung outside the Laundromat. The washers and dryers went through their rinse, spin, and dry cycles; as each reader cycled through their five minutes. Dirty laundry, clean clothes, poets, and street people tumbled together. Do you think poetry gets the stains out?

That afternoon before the reading, Morrisey took me to the Trader Joes where I discovered corked-wine for two bucks a bottle. “It’s a lot better than Mad Dog.” he assured me.

“Well in that case, I’ll buy a whole case.” I told him.

The party following the reading was held in Robin’s apartment. A place that doubles as a recording studio, publishing center and contemporary nut-house-poetry-museum; he also sleeps and eats there. Lots of wine was drunk, pictures taken, interviews recorded, chapbooks signed and swapped, and lifetime friendships made.

Our small press community is virtual. We know writers across the globe whom we have never met. Through submissions, joint projects, reviews, essays, random correspondence and publishing our poetry, we grow our writing family. A family not defined by place, as a village or city would be; or by blood, as tribes or clans might be, but rather by a compulsion to write and manipulate language. We are word artists.

So what? I didn’t need to go to Santa Cruz and return exhausted. Ellaraine, Brian and Christopher could have remained as faceless as hundreds of other writers and publishers I know. But being there made me realize, there is magic in sitting across the table from another writer. Something happens to the texture of our friendship when we learn about another poet’s day job and personal struggles; when we bitched about the writing biz, and become alive.

Contract Information: For more information about the Wired Wash Café reading series or to submit work to Poesy or Zen Baby contact Brian Morrisey / P.O. Box 7823 / Santa Cruz / CA / 95061 or e-mail him at brian@poesy.org OR Christopher Robin / P.O. Box 1611 / Santa Cruz / CA / 95061-1611. If you need a place to stay in Northern California contact Ellaraine Lockie at elockie@comcast.net.You may order a DVD copy of the Charles Ries reading at the Wired Wash Café (or any of the featured readings) by sending $5 to Christopher Robin. You can contact Michael Basinsky at the University at Buffalo’s Poetry Collection by e-mailing him at basinski@acsu.buffalo.edu.

ISBN: 0-938872-29-X

Order from:
Michael Graves
The Phoenix Reading Series
P. O. Box 84
Dyker Heights Station
8320 13th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11228

Review/Interview By: Charles P. Ries
Word Count: 3,200

Adam and Cain is Michael Graves first full length collection of poetry. He work has been widely published, and well received within academic journal. In 2004 he was the recipient of a grant of $4,500 from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. He has taught full-time for The Pennsylvania State University and been an adjunct for various branches of The City University of New York for fifteen years. Currently, he is an adjunct at New York City Technical College of The City University of New York

When Carol Novack, Editor of the edgy on line literary magazine, Mad Hatters Review (http://madhattersreview.com/) asked if I would review a new book of poetry by a writer named Michael Graves I was expecting free verse, something crazy and narrative like much of the work I read on her site. I was surprised when the book I got in the mail was (what I have come to consider), academic in style – a style that often leaves me lost, losing interest, and running for my dictionary. In Adam and Cain, Graves uses the original story of sibling rivalry, and turns it into a morality tale that transcends its biblical origins. Using a series of nine long poems Graves tells his version of this story. Here are part #1 and #2 from the forth poem in this collection titled, “Cain to Adam”: “#1 / At first, / There was one, / Adam, the Master, / Unrivalled. / Now, / There are brothers / Who envy their father, / But tremble to show it, / It is not so, / Abel, my brother, / You, whose face I see / When I look for my own / in the still waters of dream? // #2 / I would do anything / To quiet the voice / That argues within. / The unceasing voice / That drives me to fight / With arrogant Adam – / That tyrant! / And rages and quails / At the peacekeeping gestures and words / Of smooth, solicitous Eve! // O, brother, blest is your peace!”

While I have written over one hundred poetry book reviews, I don’t have an MFA. I wondered if I was qualified to review a collection of poems as erudite as this one. Everything I know about poetry has been through my own reading, living in the small press, and talking with (mostly) non-academically trained poets. Maybe I not a fan of formal poetry out ignorance, but I just don’t find it accessible. I think this issue of accessibility is at the core of the debate I often see in the small press between academically trained poets and non-academically trained poets. Some, in the non-academic small press would say poets like Graves have lost contact with the people and common expression; and some in the academic press would say the work of non-academic small press poets is not informed through study, and has not progressed.

So what was I supposed to do? Toss this book or deal with it? I knew certain poetry circles find Michael Graves work to be exceptional, and this made me curious enough to ask Graves if he would help me understand why I should care about his work. He graciously agreed to do so.

CPR: You are an academically trained writer; how does this training color or influence your writing?

MG: I am an academically trained writer, but one of the academics who trained me, James Wright, was a translator of and deeply influenced by twentieth century Spanish language poets such as Pablo Neruda and Cesar Vallejo, to mention only two. He also translated Georg Trakl, an important early twentieth century Vienese poet, among other German writers. Wright’s association with Robert Bly is well-known so I think I don’t need to go into it here. The brilliant Joycean Leonard Albert who arranged my introduction to Wright frequently encouraged me to be sure to read “juicy” work not included in the canon.

I think academic should be divided into at least two categories–the academic which honors and celebrates the archetypal, the universal, that approaches its subject rigorously, but humbly, say Socratically, with a genuine sense that basic assumptions and truths might be true but must be tested, explored, presented, etc., over and over and second the dead arrogant, prescriptive only academic. The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life. The arrogant academic would be that which honored only the canon of DWEMs –Dead White European Males, with only token exceptions, and it would assume it always had the final say as to what was worth reading and why. Dictionaries and those who work on them recognize the reality that language is a living thing and that words and meanings and usages phrases enter languages and become accepted, so why shouldn’t academics recognize that poems come into being and gain and deserve recognition, even if they compete with canonical works for attention.

CPR: Adam and Cain is your first full collection of poems; have you done chaps? How come so few books of poetry?

MG: I have a chapbook Outside St. Jude’s (REM Press, 1990) from an extremely small press that a friend, Remington Murphy published for awhile. It’s been reissued as an e-book by Ram Devineni who publishes Rattapallax. It’s available by going to the Rattapallax site and as a pdf. I also have a chapbook Illegal Border Crosser forthcoming from Gloria Mindock’s Cervena Barva Press

I have about another five to six hundred good or better than good poems on a wide range of subjects. I have one manuscript ready to mail out and the rest are waiting for me to find the time and energy to finish organizing into mss. That work was interrupted by my mother’s death in March, 2006. Gloria Mindock is interested in publishing a full-length collection. Last but not least, this is an opportunity for a good publisher to get some of my work while it’s still available!

CPR: Do you rewrite your poems extensively?

MG: Though I rewrite some poems extensively, in general, the answer is no, but they have long gestation periods. Some are looked at over many years, five, ten, fifteen until I know what to do. They are often not finished when they come, but they are often close. I jot notes for poems all the time. And I have long stretches when I’m thinking about writing on and off all day long. I suppose I’m obsessive and don’t mind thinking about trying to transform my life, especially my inner life, into poetry. However, I know that writers can be extremely unreliable commentators on their own creative processes, like a narrator in a novel.

CPR: In your Cervena Barva Press interview you say, “The book [Adam and Cain] was written slowly over many years. The initial impulse came to be during Leonard Albert’s course Religious Ideas in Modern Fiction, and I think the style of the poems might be indebted to Auerbach’s discussion of Biblical style in Minesis.” You also say, it was written in a ‘non-discursive in a high modernist manner.’ What is Minesis? What is a non-discursive in a high modernist manner?

MG: I started the book with the short story Cain in Exile, originally titled Cain and written for Leonard Albert’s course in the short story, probably sometime in 1976-77. I finished the book in 2005. So, the book took about thirty years to complete. Mimesis is the transliteration of Aristotle’s word for imitation. He writes that art imitates life; mimesis is the representation of life. After that, it gets complicated: we could probably say that any poem or work of fiction imitates life. I think it becomes a question of by what means, in what style, what degree of success, what truth?

By non-discursive high modernist manner I mean that the transitions are left out between the poems and that the reader must think about the relationship of the parts without help from the writer. Also, the reader is not told how to interpret the work. For example, he is not told Adam inflicts a psychic wound on Cain. The rationale is the writer need not tell the obvious to the reader and that the reader gets more pleasure out of participating in the creation of the text, and that the impact of what he gets is more powerful and profound, and that it is modern in a deep sense to give the reader the freedom to determine for himself.

CPR: What audience did you have in mind when you wrote Adam and Cain? Will my neighbors who shop at the Pic’n Save down the street enjoy this book?

MG: Everybody who’s interested in poetry. Everybody who doesn’t say I hate Biblical themes on principle. Everybody who doesn’t say there must be no difficulty in poetry. Everybody who doesn’t say the Bible is the final word and no one can add to or subtract from it. Anybody who hears the music in the poems and imagines the human situation will feel their power. I have already had a wide range of readers buy or praise this book, readers without college degrees, from various ethnic groups, people from various walks of life.

CPR: A few of your metaphors in Adam and Cain were meaningless to me because I am not a biblical scholar; so in a sense these metaphors have not deepened my appreciation of your work, but obscured it. Maybe as we read widely, travel, think, experience life with growing awareness and evolve, our art reflects this insight and complexity of thought that come with our personal and creative growth. For example, we may use metaphors that are common to us, but uncommon to most people. I recently read a New York Times Book Review interview with a noted poetry critic who said she didn’t review poetry collections from writers born after 1950 because she felt so out of touch with some of the cultural images they were using (cartoons characters, TV. shows, cultural events, movies etc) images that were very clear to them, but not clear to her.

MG: Absolutely, there are books I could not do justice to. For one example, I find Allen Mandelbaum’s, The Maxioms of Chelm beyond me, I have not found the time and energy to look up the terms I don’t know, though I have spent some time looking for critical articles on it, but I love its music. Though I like to think one could sense/perceive that something is interesting, worthwhile, etc., even if one’s grasp of it were limited.

CPR: Do you feel elevated or formal language, such as you use in Adam and Cain, looses its audience because it is difficult to grasp?

MG: No. My most important audience is composed of people who can enter and/or accept the book. In one sense, the audience by definition is the people who read the book. I’m not writing for people who won’t look a word up when necessary. I suppose it’s fair to call the language elevated, but I think the better term, which you mention, is formal. It carries no negative or satiric connotations. And there are plenty of poems in the collection that are made of easily understood mono or disyllabic words only.

CPR: You wanted Adam and Cain to be read; yet your writing style will not be accessible to most people. Why publish it?

MG: I’m not worried about being a best seller and I’m not sure my work won’t reach a wide audience. Nonetheless, I am aware that it is quite possible that it won’t. Perhaps this comparison would be helpful: getting to really know someone takes time and effort. Even though there is a place for connections that are immediate and wonderful, all too often, when we connect immediately and “completely” we are sorry later. Most of us would agree that long term relationships need investments of time, energy, willingness, open mindedness, dialogue, etc and we are very used to saying reading a book is a conversation… In addition, I think that Adam and Cain has qualities that a reader could connect with immediately. Sir Philip Sidney settled for, “Fit audience though few.” I want as many fit audience members as possible, and I think a lot of them are out there. Whether or not I’ll reach them…

CPR: What attracted you to this morality tale?

MG: I think the key moment came in Leonard Albert’s class Religious Ideas in Fiction or The Bible as Literature, when he pointed out that God gave no reason for His rejection of Cain’s gift in the King James Bible. To paraphrase, I thought something like “What an amazing thing.” I didn’t have these words but it pointed to God’s nature as Manichean and suggested Gnostic perspectives on Biblical texts were possible. I think there was also something deeply rebellious in me. I had already shown some of my writing to Professor Albert and he had voiced the opinion that I had an argument with God, very unMiltonic I suppose! And I had already discovered my conflicted anger, which might be too mild an expression, at my parents.

CPR: In the same Cervena Barva Press interview you say Jame Joyce is a big influence of yours. The American writer, Max Eastman once asked Joyce why Finnegan’s Wake was written in a very difficult style and Joyce replied, “To keep critic busy for three hundred yeas.” Some critics considered this book a masterpiece, though many readers found it incomprehensible. I guess you don’t find Joyce incomprehensible? How come I do?

MG: I’m willing to read a lot of Joyce criticism and join Joyce reading groups.

CPR: Fair enough, but tell me why you love James Joyce and how has he influenced your writing?

MG: Joyce was one of the very first writers I was exposed to after I returned to school and he represented the triumph of the artist over repression. The first of his works that made a major impact on me was Dubliners. Central to Joyce’s purpose in that collection of stories was the revelation to both the reader and the characters that the characters were trapped and paralyzed in a living death, although the naturalistic surface of stories remained undisturbed. I encountered those stories at a messianic phase in my life and they filled me with enthusiasm.

I have spent many years misreading Joyce in important ways and unable to penetrate much of his work, especially Finnegans Wake, but what was accessible to me was so immediately rewarding, so full of beauty, human importance, respect for art, intellectual interest and excellence, I have been willing to persist in my attempt to read him. It is said of Joyce that one only rereads him. His work has inspired me to explore the sexual content of religious symbols and images, to strive to make theme/form and content inseparable, to explore indeterminacy in narrative sequences, to charge writing with as much meaning as possible.

CPR: Let’s talk about whether or not poetry can not be formal. I believe this term (form) is most often used when referring to academics that choose to write within various forms (sonatas etc). Yes, narrative poetry is a form; but for the most part narrative poetry, of the sort I find throughout the small press and enjoy, does not obscure.

MG: There is no necessary opposition between form and clarity. It could be argued that form is a clarity that emerges from the flux or obscurity of experience or that form is the underlying structure or can be. The sonnet, for example, is based on the statement of a situation or problem in the first eight lines, which reaches its fullest tension about the eighth line and the comment or resolution in the last six. It is a form that is true to the mind’s perception of experience: problem and solution. It is true that some forms, such as the sestina, if followed rigorously, are complicated and difficult. But even so, the content in a form need not be obscure; need not be filled with arcane or specialized facts or allusions. Narratives have formal elements, as I assume you agree—plot, protagonists, narrators, conflicts, symbols, irony, setting, situation, rising action, climax, resolution, images. I think the question is always whether or not they are well used.

CPR: It feels like our poetry worlds are, indeed, worlds apart. Do your students at NY City Technical College relate to your poetry?

MG: Surprisingly, yes, some of the students do relate to my poems. I read them a selection from Adam and Cain and my other work. Of course, some of them have little interest in English and little if any of the course content seems to reach them. It’s not appropriate to read them many of my poems or spend a lot of time on them. I teach remedial writing and freshman composition. And City Tech students are not succeeding at passing the CPE, the Competency Proficiency Exam, so there is great concern to get them ready for the Final exam. I think that teaching poetry could be one way to try to get them enthusiastic about language, but our curriculum doesn’t really include that as much of an option. Our freshman composition course has a required text and there is only one poem in it, but I take a little time near the end of semester to give the students a sense of who I am as a writer, and some of them feel the emotion the poems generate and give –I can’t find the words,–grunts, wows, gasps. Not a whole lot of them, but some. This semester I had a student ask to purchase the book. I asked him to contact me after the semester ended, that is, after final grades went in. Though he asked twice, I haven’t heard from him, so he might have been hoping to influence his grade.

CPR: How old are you? What do you do for a living? Are you married? Do you have children?

MG: I’m 55. I work as an adjunct instructor; technically I believe the term is lecturer for the City University of New York and a reader for a faculty member at New Jersey City University with weak eyes. I’m single and don’t have any children. I still have fantasies, but I’m getting old….

CPR: We are both getting old; but (I pray) immeasurably wiser. Thank you for widening both my vocabulary and my mind with regard formal poetry and narrowing the great divide between academic and non-academic poets.

Graves earlier comment that, “long term relationships need investments of time, energy, willingness, open mindedness and dialogue” has timeless truth to it. How many times have I been surprised to become close with someone who after a first and second meeting I feel no connection with? Yet over time something begins to happen; we begin to be aware of something deeper. Through process of preparing this review I have had to look deeper, think deeper, and read again. Adam and Cain was no fast dance, but I got through it. It was hard work, and I will read it again. After all, we’ve become friends.

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• If you would like to hear Michael Graves read his “Blatnoy Series go to: http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue3/poetry_graves.shtml

• To find Michael Graves interview in Cervena Brava Press go to: (http://www.cervenabarvapress.com/gravesinterview.htm)

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Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over one hundred and sixty print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing, and most recently read his poetry on National Public Radio’s Theme and Variations, a program that is broadcast over seventy NPR affiliates. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a novel based on memory. Ries is also the author of five books of poetry — the most recent entitled, The Last Time which was released by The Moon Press in Tucson, Arizona. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot (www.wordriot.org) and Pass Port Journal (www.passportjournal.org). He is on the board of the Woodland Pattern Bookstore (www.woodlandpattern.org) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Most recently he has been appointed to the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. You may find additional samples of his work by going to: http://www.literarti.net/Ries/ .

Gloria Mindock, Editor

P.O. Box 440357

W. Somerville, MA 02144-3222

www.cervenabarvapress.com

By: Charles P. Ries

Word Count: 1,013

This Review First Appeared In: PRESA

What do you suppose is in the water in Somerville? Small press publishers are popping up all over the place: Ibbetson Street Press, sunny outside press and now, Červená Barva Press. Maybe we should all drink some of that Somerville prose juice as it appears to be poetry fortified.

Gloria Mindock founded Červená Barva Press in April 2005, since that time she has published and designed ten chapbooks, three e-books, and twenty-one poetry postcards. Forthcoming in 2007 are four more chapbooks, four full-length poetry books, as well as two plays and fourteen poetry postcards by fourteen poets using paintings by Nancy Mitchell. Oh, and she also publishes a monthly electronic newsletter which lists readings from all over the world as well as interviews with authors. I asked Gloria how it all began, “I started this press because of my passion for poetry. I edited the Boston Literary Review (BluR) for 10 years, and I read high-quality submissions during that period. Since the magazine ceased circulation, I have spent many years freelance writing, but see a need for a new publishing forum. This led me to take it a step further and expand into publishing. I wanted to provide another outlet for writers who take risks, have a strong voice, and are unique. Eventually I will publish more writing from different countries, particularly authors from Eastern Europe. There are so many wonderful writers in this world and I want to give them more exposure.” Mindock’s fascination with Eastern Europe, and especially Prague, prompted her to name her press Červená Barva which means the “red color” in Czech.

As the following short poetry reviews will note, Mindock has a wide range of tastes and inclinations when it comes to the writers she chooses to publish:

The Whole Enchilada

By: Ed Miller

Wonderful! If this is Miller’s first chap book – I want to put in an advance order on the next ten. I loved “Dear Poet” and “Extraterrestrials Use Holographic Imagery Of Naked Females”. How glorious to read a wry sense of humor who is capable of creating such endless possibilities.

God Of The Jellyfish

By: Lucille Lang Day

We need more poets with M.A.’s in zoology and Ph.D.’s in science and math education, or we will never discover the metaphoric limits of the ocean, stars and universe. Oh, and Lucille Lang Day also has a M.A. in English and M.F.A. in creative writing. She will never run out of material given the galaxies she has chosen to examine. She does a wonderful job making this collision of science, the cosmic, and the day-to-day work.

Of All The Meals I Had Before:

Poems About Food and Eating

By: Doug Holder

This collection of poetry may well elevate food above sex as one of life’s two great pleasures. Holder writes in the spare precise style he is known for. No extras – all meat and potatoes. These are highly descriptive, ambient poems of place and person. I was surprised at how well Holder pulled this collection off.

Gothic Calligraphy

By: Flavia Cosma

Mindock says her favorite writers come from Eastern Europe. As I read this delicious and somber Romanian born Canadian poet, it is easy to see why. Cosma uses nature as a backdrop and foundation for her poetry. She is a Richard Wilber Poetry in Translation winner for her book of poetry 47 POEMS. One has to wonder if being born speaking Slavic gives a poet the upper hand when painting silk on water.

Bilingual Poems

By: Richard Kostelanetz

I had to work hard to get through Kostelanetz’s work – esoteric word art more than poetry. Begging the question, where does poetry end and visual art begin? Scrabble meets Einstein. Bilingual Poems is on one level a series of two dimensional Mandalas, and on another, a series of Gideon knots. Kostelanetz says that his goal is “to be the most inventive poet ever in American Literature.” He just might do it, but will people read it?

W Is For War

By: George Held

It is hard to create metaphor or image equal to combat. War is horror – how can words ever come close to mirroring moments of such suffering and fear? I give George Held credit for trying and doing such a good job at it. His poem, “From Nam to Armageddon” is a great piece of work. One of the most complete war poems I have ever read.

Fishing In Green Waters

By: Judy Ray

These are effortless poems that spin between here and now using both conversational and lyrical language. Judy Ray lavishes description around the subjects of her observations that are often common in their nature, but elevates their substance with her gentle compassion. Her poems, “Anonymous Valentines” and “Sometimes” are wonderful works. About this Fishing In Green Waters, Judy Ray says, “This new collection is more elusive in theme, and maybe more mysterious for that reason. Several of the poems refer to those sparks of excitement which come from recognition of some moment of transient beauty, or a small gesture which speaks for a historic moment.” This is work by a very fine, skilled, steady hand

I asked Mindock about her background and influences and she said, “My mother always painted, and poetry was always around me. I always had that artistic background. My dad taught 7th and 8th grade English. There are a lot of artists in my family. My sister is a musicologist. My parents are my biggest influence.”

Doug Holder of Ibbetson Street says this about Mindock, “Gloria has long experience in the poetry biz. We call each other holy fools because we are passionate about our work, and don’t make a red cent, like most of the holy fools in the small press. She puts out a quality product and is a joy to deal with!” Doug is right, and we poets are lucky to have holy fools who work for nothing, but the joy it brings them.

Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over two hundred print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a novel based on memory and five books of poetry. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot (www.wordriot.org), Pass Port Journal (www.passportjournal.org) and ESC! (www.escmagazine.com). He is on the board of the Woodland Pattern Bookstore (www.woodlandpattern.org). He is a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes (http://www.visitsheboygan.com/dairyland/). You may find additional samples of his work by going to: http://www.literati.net/Ries/

At the County Fair

By: Ellaraine Lockie

63 Pages / 34 Poems

Price: $10.00

PWJ Publishing

P.O. Box 238

Tehama, CA 96090

www.wellinghamjones.com

ISBN: 0-939221-45-4

Review/Interview By: Charles P. Ries

Word Count: 783

This Review First Appeared In: Chiron Review

Ellaraine Lockie once again walks the tight rope between poetry that is accessible and ethereal – poetry that is at once plain spoken and musical. The title for her most recent collection of poetry is deceptively colloquial, Blue Ribbons at the County Fair, but her poems travel a varied world taking us far beyond the confines of the county fair. She uses a variety of technique and style to take us with her. As in her past work, she tiptoes along the high-wire that can separate the work of the academically trained and the self-taught writers.

In her poem, “Lost Legacy,” we find her wonderful ability to use alliteration with good effect. Moving us gently forward as she reflects on her beloved Montana, “Houses a hundred years old / with Alzheimer’s / Abandoned in isolation wards / on western prairies // Where homesteads were settled / on small town sanity brinks / Mine long ago lost / to profit margins / on minimal Montana farm // Hospice where I come to heal / from city assaults / My heart heavier / than the hard timber / turned driftwood soft.”

Lockie has received first place prizes for each poem in this collection, and as Lockie explains in her essay at the conclusion of the book, “And yes, some received blue ribbons at county fairs.” She goes on to say, “When I began writing poetry, naturally I thrilled to the idea of poetry contests. Not only are they fun and suspenseful, but placing in them gives credibility to cover-letters, pays money prizes or other honorariums and sometimes provides public reading opportunities.” So in a sense Blue Ribbons at the County Fair is sort of an Ellaraine Lockie Greatest Hits Collection. I especially enjoyed her poems focusing on the topic of modern romance – of one sort or another, such as in “The Other Woman”: “She shows signs of jealousy / That slight smart of suspicion / Of course she would know / How a woman / can move in on a man / Hang her underwear / over his philandering lines / Being a practiced poacher herself / An artist in sculpting seduction”. And again in, “Silk Dreams”: “I told you ahead of time / this affair / if it happened / wouldn’t be casual / But here it is a few hours old / Already wearing sneakers / and a wrinkled tee shirt / You say you will pass my way / when time permits / I say the way has potholes / that require attention / Mapped maintenance.” “Defying Gravity” also covers this eternal landscape with exceptional skill.

Lockie told me about her jump into poetry, “I previously had written in other genres (and still do)–nonfiction, magazine articles and children’s picture books. Nine years ago I had not read a poem since high school, except for the occasional one I came across in children’s literature. I thought I hated poetry; I thought it had to rhyme. Then one day an old friend sent me some of his poems and wanted my opinion. I liked them, but they didn’t rhyme. So I called my children’s writing mentors for advice. When they told me about free verse, I became obsessed with writing it and with getting it published. This happened at a tough time in my life, and poetry became my salvation. I just jumped in and started writing like crazy, unaware of what other poets were writing. I entered the poems in contests before submitting to editors, knowing that I needed something in cover letters to entice editors into reading my work carefully.” If she needed verification that she was on the right track, she certainly got it.

What I enjoyed most about this collection is Lockie’s ability to use language beautifully and yet have it remain accessible. I understood her metaphors; I could relate to her stories and pictures. And while her writing was accessible, it remained well developed and carefully composed. There are only a few writers in the independent small press who manage to walk this line and not fall in to the pit of abstraction (Michael Kriesel and Gloria Mindock are certainly two who come to my mind). One wonders if as poets grow and extend themselves that they must inevitably drift further away from the common and push the art form, play with structure and elevate their style of their writing? But it was a joy for me to settle into Lockie’s recent collection and find no extraneous obstacles to my entering her world or her meaning. As Lockie has grown as a poet she has become more elegant about communicating common meaning.

Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over two hundred print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a novel based on memory and five books of poetry. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot (www.wordriot.org), Pass Port Journal (www.passportjournal.org) and ESC! (www.escmagazine.com). He is on the board of the Woodland Pattern Bookstore (www.woodlandpattern.org). He is a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes (http://www.visitsheboygan.com/dairyland/). You may find additional samples of his work by going to: http://www.literati.net/Ries/